


Smoke Break

by zaychik



Category: The Venture Bros
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-05 17:51:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1096786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zaychik/pseuds/zaychik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dr. Girlfriend and 21 understand each other better than either realize.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. All the Places That You Go

**Author's Note:**

  * For [infinimato](https://archiveofourown.org/users/infinimato/gifts).



Well, this sucked.

Gary wiped a chunk of what smelled like someone’s liver off his goggles, shook the ringing out of his ears and wondered if he had made the wrong decision.

It wasn't like they were really holding him captive, at least not anymore. He wasn't totally sure when they had given up on that. He wasn't even sure they meant to kidnap him in the first place. They had been hovering right over his mom's neighborhood when he lied and said he didn't remember the house number anymore. Stockholm Syndrome or whatever.

The guys didn't get paid as far as he could tell, but they got free meals and they had already given him a number and everything. They had all pitched in for one of those ice cream cakes when he survived his first raid on the compound-he didn't tell them he had accidentally locked himself in Venture’s lab freezer for about half of it. 36 was teaching him to beat-box. Sure, maybe most people didn't end up living in a room with 85 other guys who all dressed like butterflies, but he could swear they had become something like his friends.

Now most of them were in various sized pieces all over Venture's yard.

He had someone else's blood in his shoes and it felt super gross. Not just in a battle fatigued, "born to kill, sir" kind of way but actually gross, like it was getting in his socks. They weren't issued nearly enough clean socks.

Gary ducked into the nearest building that didn't look like it had anybody dying in it and nearly crashed straight into Her.

The bosses' girlfriend. Or number 2. Or something. He wasn't sure what else she did, exactly. Nobody was. 29 and 43 said she really was some kind of doctor but nobody had ever seen her doing any real doctoring.

She wore too much makeup, she had perfect black hair sprayed in place like a mafia wife and she smelled like something super expensive. She was crazy hot and kind of scary, like some kind of dragon lady, or the evil guy from GI Joe’s girlfriend if she smoked and swore a lot more.

When the door slid open she immediately stubbed out her cigarette with the heel of her boot. She didn't say anything, just crossed her arms and fixed him with an imperious eye. For his part, Gary tried to think of absolutely anything he could possibly say that wasn't "you always smell really great" or "are you really a doctor?" He finally decided to go with just being direct.

"Dr. The Monarch's Girlfriend, have you seen the Monarch?"

“No. Wasn't he supposed to be with you?"

Gary hoped he hadn't visibly winced. That voice was wicked unfortunate. She hardly ever addressed the henchmen directly, but it was sure clear enough whenever she and the Monarch were arguing. Or having sex. Or both. 24 said she had gotten a baboon’s heart when she was a baby and it had tried to take over her body. 46 said it was her uterus and that she had done it herself as part of her thesis in college, which seemed kinda unlikely since he had never seen her do any actual science.

Crap. How long had he been staring at her? What part of her had he been staring at exactly? She cleared her throat loudly and gave him a pointed look.

"Aren't you that kid that got onto the cocoon in Washington? Weren't we supposed to drop you off at home?"

"Nope. We dropped him off a couple weeks ago."

"Huh. Okay...aren't you supposed to be…I dunno, doing something, then?”

“We were supposed to be storming the Venture Compound, but the boss didn't give us the duplicate keys for the gate so 29 decided to just ring the buzzer over and over again until they got sick of us. You know, draw them out into the open. Then that huge guy showed up and now everyone except me is kinda dead. And I can’t find the Monarch. Again.”

“All of them? We sent like twenty of you. To open a gate.”

“They’re kind of scattered. It’s hard to tell.”

“And you can’t find the Monarch?”

“Nope. Do you think he’s dead?”

She shrugged. “Nah.”

“What if he is? What do we do then? Does that make you like a widow or...what is the villain version of a widow anyway?"

She sighed in exasperation.

"Sweetie, what's your number?"

"21 or 20. I'm not sure anymore. Do we move up a number when someone gets their arms ripped off or-”

“You haven’t been doing this very long, have you? Look. You at least know who I am, right? If the Monarch was hurt, I would have heard about it at least a dozen times already. Once he broke a toe kicking those steel doors out front and he just laid on the porch for like an hour yelling until someone came and got me. Anyway, he probably just went home. Be a lamb and go around and wait for the cocoon out front, he'll probably pick you up himself."

Dr. Girlfriend doubted that was likely to happen, but it got him out of her way regardless. She remembered him for some reason. He had a squeaky, excited voice and he had a question-or an opinion to share-about every goddamned thing in the universe. 

 She usually couldn't be bothered with remembering the 80 some-odd bodies at her beck and call. She tolerated them, mostly tried to avoid them. It was hard to conjure up affection or interest for anything so disposable but this one had been alive long enough to make some kind of impression on her, which was something even if she had already forgotten his number. It was almost a shame he was going to die.

Dr. Girlfriend waited until he was out of sight before slipping out the back door and heading towards the aircraft hangar on the opposite side of the compound.

Poor kid. He missed death by Samson once and now he probably thought his number would never come up. He was sixteen at most but fat enough to pass for twenty with the goggles on. She couldn't remember being that irritating at sixteen, but then again she chose not to remember much from that part of her life, so dim and far removed from the one she led now. All she remembered was that it hadn't suited her, even then.

Brock's Charger looked like had just been waxed. Probably tuned up, too. Too bad for him the boys always forgot to lock it. Sheila slipped into the driver's seat, pulled a bobby pin out of her hair and set the timer on her communicator for 61 seconds. Fifty nine for the car, two for good luck.

The engine turned over in less than thirty and she slammed the car into reverse just as Brock came through the hangar doors with a bloody Bowie knife between his teeth. She flipped him off as she drove past him.

She thought about picking up their surviving henchman on her way out, but she was on a deadline and it was that or stop for smokes, and she was on her last pack. The walk wouldn't kill him either. She made a quiet promise to herself that she would remember the kid's number, if he lived.


	2. All the tigers with the stripes

Dr. Girlfriend decided during her shower that it wasn't worth asking the Monarch where exactly everything that morning had gone to hell. There was already an edginess in the air that threatened to spill over and ruin their entire night.

With all the frustration of the day rinsed off she decided to give the Monarch his birthday present a few months early, for lack of anything else to do with their afternoon. A victory present despite the lack of any kind of victory whatsoever. Like the rest of their relationship, it had seemingly no basis to stand on in reality, but it was their reality and he seemed to enjoy the distraction. Not to mention, she was kinda proud of herself regardless.

"You're shitting me. You weren't kidding. You actually made me wings that work."

"Well, yeah. I told you I could do it, no big deal."

"And they really work."

"They really work." She grinned. "It's a super basic design but I was up all night working on it so you're welcome. I dunno, I've always been good at stuff like that. I was home sick a lot growing up. I used to help my dad out in his garage when I got bored. I can put together pretty much anything at this point. "

"Were you were sick that often, or were you playing hooky like so much Bueller?"

She shrugged and laughed nervously,suddenly regretting that third glass of wine that was making her run her mouth more than usual. She hoped he would get the hint and let that particular question go unanswered. There was that nervous uncertainty in the air again, that feeling she thought she had washed off along with the grass stains on her ass from crawling under the fence and the cigarette smoke in her hair. She was the former Queen Etheria; heat incarnate. She was all gelignite and white perfectly polished patent leather boots, The Monarch's extra hot, super smart butterfly queen. As far as she was concerned this was the only reincarnation of Sheila he ever needed to know.

The Monarch seemed to sense it was the wrong thing to ask and he swallowed awkwardly, fumbling to regain the mood.

"Anyway, pookums, the other thing! Our special...secret thing you said you were going to surprise me with!"

In one motion, she pushed him back onto the bed and climbed on top, straddling him. She leaned down close and purred something into his ear.

She wasn't wearing anything underneath her costume.

The wings were tossed to the side, temporarily forgotten.

As the Monarch dozed afterward, Dr. Girlfriend lay awake, her body exhausted but her mind refusing to shut off despite the bottle of wine she and the Monarch had finished off together. Among other things, she was thinking about Queen Etheria again. It had been positively bugging her for weeks.

_She was spending the last few hours of her 21st birthday limping along the roadside more than slightly drunk, hair a wreck, her feet hopelessly blistered from walking for hours in stiletto boots, putting one foot in front of the other out of sheer spite._

_The worst part was knowing that he wasn't coming after her because he was sure she would be back regardless. There was absolutely no other place that Queen Etheria could exist. In spite of that inevitability, she was walking headlong into the night. The adrenaline rush and vodka were wearing off. The gas station was locked up for the night but she leaned against the streetlamp outside and dialed a number on the payphone._

_She could practically hear her mother already._

_She's taking drugs or worse._

_Last time she showed up nearly naked, crying her eyes out. Probably the speed._

_Or worse._

_Sheila hung up before anyone could answer._

_The actual distance from entrance to exit was always longer than it looked from wherever you stood._

__

She sat up on one arm and traced the ridge of her sleeping boyfriend's eyebrow with a fingertip. She wondered who she would be at that moment, if five minutes before the shittiest birthday ever officially ended, a guy with half the cab of a tractor trailer hopelessly entwined in his torso hadn't pulled over and opened one of the little doors in his side.

Sheila slipped out of bed and headed down to the cargo bay to buff the scratches off Brock's car before returning it in the morning.


	3. Dodge Charger B/C Body

It was done. It was probably 2 AM and she was going to pay for it in the morning, but she had been so immersed in her task that she didn't notice until she threw down her rag that it had started raining outside, which probably made everything she had just done kind of pointless. Sheila sank down onto the concrete and lit her last cigarette of the night, leaning with her back against the car and watching the smoke form lazy swirls in the humid air. Being deep in the recesses of the cocoon felt like being buried somewhere deep underground, but not in a claustrophobic, smothering kind of way.  The steady drumming against the fiberglass shell of the cocoon soothed her for some reason, and she felt strangely calm.

She wondered if the kid had ever made it back to the cocoon.

"Hey. Dr. Girlfriend?"

Speak of the devil. She had marked for him death and he was very much alive after all, and once again he was interrupting a rare moment of private time. At least he knew her name now, which was a start.

"Did you figure out what number you're supposed to be?" She said. "And is there a reason you're doing that creepy staring but not staring thing at me again?"

"Still 21. I think. And I'm not judging or anything but you're wearing like, nothing. So I don't really know where I'm supposed to be looking."

Sheila sighed. "What do you want, 21?"

"I mostly wanted to see Brock's car. Guys have been sneaking down here all night to sit in it."

"Well, I don't want you guys sitting in it. But yeah, it's gorgeous, isn't it? The first car I ever stole was a Charger. Same paint job and everything. Not as nice as this one though."

"Look, Dr. Girlfriend. I really, really don't want to get set on fire or killed with my own leg or anything else I've seen happen to the guys dressed like me over the last six months. But you and the Monarch are fine. You steal Brock Samson's car and he just waits for you to return it. How do you, you know. Not die."

"Oh, don't get me wrong. He hates when I steal his car. Don't ever try it, that is a strictly villain thing."

"You've done it before?"

"Like three times."

"That's what I'm talking about!"

Dr. Girlfriend turned to face him. It was becoming clear only one of them understood the world in which they lived. She wondered how he had survived so far.

"Sweetie. You want some advice? Don't ever rely on the Monarch or me-but especially the Monarch-to save you from anything. Whichever henchman has lived longer than you, you go and make friends with him. You stick right by his side. Understand?"

 Later she would wonder if her advice had meant anything, or if 21was just blessed with the same kind of blind, lifesaving luck as her husband and to a lesser extent, herself.

Dr. Mrs. the Monarch was the first one to see 24's number on the dead/missing roster, the exact moment unimportant to her in the long run, lost sometime during that very long, hot, phone call afternoon following the events on Venture's lawn. She was the first one to apologize, though she wasn't sure for what.


End file.
